1. Terminology

Terminology has two parts. The comfortable, objective definitions given here, and the one your team decides to adopt as your own definition.

Terms to be familiar with:

Human Centered Design (HCD): An approach to problem solving, commonly used in design and management frameworks that develops solutions to problems by involving the human perspective in all steps of the problem-solving process

User Centered Design (UCD): An iterative design process in which designers focus on the users and their needs in each phase of the design process

Design Thinking: An abstracted and iterative process derived from a 5-stage approach to the way designers approach solution finding and problem solving. The 5 stages include: empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test.

User Experience (UX): The discipline of designing, strategizing, and delivering the overall “experience” of the user when attempting to carry out the intent of the product; measured in part by how easy it is to learn or pleasing it is to us

User Interface (UI): The physical intersection of the product and the user. For example, visual design, the simplicity of the webpage, form, or button.

Customer Experience (CX): The sum of all interactions between a customer and your organization. It’s the blend of your organization’s physical performance [and] emotions that you create all measured against customer expectations across all your points of interaction.

Employee Experience (EX): A worker’s observations and perceptions about his or her employment at a particular company. Experience is often influenced by the company’s physical workspace, the work-life balance the company provides and technology that enables productivity and technology.

Service Design: The activity of planning and organizing people, infrastructure, communication and material components of a service in order to improve its quality and the interaction between the service provider and its customers.

Lean UX: Combines the solution-based approach of design thinking with the iteration methods which compound Agile

Agile/Agile Software Development Process: Agile software development refers to a group of software development methodologies based on iterative development, where requirements and solutions evolve through collaboration between self-organizing cross-functional teams

Iteration/Iterative Processes: An iterative process is a process for calculating a desired result by means of a repeated cycle of operations. An iterative process should be convergent, i.e., it should come closer to the desired result as the number of iterations increases.

Systems Thinking: Systems thinking or system theory is an underlying philosophy that looks at the way interrelated and interdependent parts work together within an environment to achieve a complex result.

Journey Mapping – Journey mapping is the activity used to create a visual journey map of the customer’s end-to-end interactions towards a goal. It captures the task, outcome, channels, and emotions at each step within a stage or phase.

Mock Up: A mockup is a full-size model of a design or device, used for product presentations or other purposes. Think of it as a means of showing off what your design will actually look like when it’s put out into the real world.